What to do if there’s a gap in your posting schedule

I’ve been writing a few articles for EzineArticles.com lately, and was checking out the various plugins that are available for WordPress. There’s the official one that will allow you to repurpose your blog post as articles, and another unofficial one that works the other way… it allows you to use articles from EzineArticles.com on your blog.

It got me thinking – what do you do when you need to fill a gap in your blog’s posting schedule? Would you use an article directory like EzineArticles.com, ask for some guest bloggers to writeyou unique content, or just leave a gap?

Article Directories

EzineArticles.com is one of the largest repositories of writings on the Internet. It’s a great place to submit an article to because you know it’s going to get read and, potentially, generate traffic for your site. They are also a huge resource of material for your blog but buying in articles is controvertial. For a start, it means the content on your site is not unique, and some people would consider that to be an insult to your readers. Search engines certainly notice duplicate content, so don’t expect to rank particularly highly for the keywords contained in your bought-in article. Secondly, if you get into the habit of using articles from directories you wil become lazy… and lazy blogging soon becomes dull for your readers.

All of this is not to say that article directories are inherently bad – just that you have to be careful how you use them.

Getting guest bloggers

Getting people to write unique content for your blog is a great way to mix things up a bit, introduce a new voice, and bring benefits to your guest author too as they are exposed to a new audience. If you have a good relationship with another blogger you may be able to find guest authors fairly easily, but it can sometimes be difficult to get people to write articles for you. Even if you do, you’ll want to ensure the guest article fits with what your readers are expecting to find on your site, and that it’s up to the standard you expect.

Of course, assuming your guest author wants to give a good impression of themselves they’ll be writing some of their best material for you. After all, this is their chance to make an impression your readers… and they’ll want to make a good one.

Leaving a gap

There’s a very strong argument that you shouldn’t just post because you feel you have to… instead you should post because you have something to say. That encourages a high quality of post, but it’s not great for your readers as they’re never quite sure when there will be something new to read. Assuming you have a very understanding readership, or that most of your readers read your site via their RSS readers this might not be too much of a problem – but what if you have readers who actually visit your site every day rather than using RSS?

So, you have a gap in your post schedule… we’ve thought about a few options… what would do you?

Comments

I've faced this a few times as I don't pre plan posts. In the past I would move mountains to find something to get onto the site, but recently I've become more relaxed about it. I don't think anyone has noticed to be honest! :)

I try to pre-plan my posts, but it doesn't always work out. I've started to become a bit more relaxed about missing a day here or there, but I still like to have something published every day if possible.

I do think you produce higher quality material when you're not stressing about having something go live on a strict schedule.

Comment are closed: Sorry, comments are closed on this article. We automatically close comments on older articles to try and cut down on the amount of spam comments being submitted to the site.

If you want to tell us what you think about this article, why not visit our Facebook Page or Subreddit and leave a comment there instead?

Welcome

Geek-speak is devoted to the geeky side of life, whether it's games, gadgets, TV and movies or even cars you'll find something to feed your inner geek.

Have a look around and, if you like what you see, keep up to date via RSS.